Bloody
by ImOrca
Summary: Joan Watson brings a "liason" home for the night, and it ends up coming to blows. Rating may be high for safety.


**Notes: This is my first fanfiction for this show. It's only my third attempt at fiction ever. If you care to review, please be respectful. Rating is probably too high, but better to be safe until I know the turf. This story is timed presuming that Watson stays on premises after her employment is technically over.**

****Edited 3/23/13 for typing errors.**

**Disclaimer: Copyright for _Elementary_ belongs to CBS, et al. My writing belongs to me, as do errors.**

**Title: "****Bloody"**

The first time Watson brought someone home for the night, she was certain that Holmes would interrogate her the next day. Worst case scenario, she had expected that he would interrupt them mid-coitus with a question of inconsequence simply to prove with finality that he understood sex merely as the relieving of bodily imperatives. She had warned her partner that it might happen. Luckily, Thad was very...confident in his abilities, and she knew from experience that he wouldn't care if film cameras stormed through following the contestants from _The Amazing Race_ on a challenge. The man was nothing if not focused on his goal. Joan found it a bit unfortunate that his intellect was not nearly as honed as his chiseled abs. But, then, they didn't see each other to match wits.

It was mildly surprising that she able to enjoy a languid night with nothing but the expected high points, followed by a day of the typical Holmes-esque-apades. She remained warily on edge for the next three days. She had been around the bastard long enough to know that he'd be playing the probabilities and waiting until she _didn't_ expect him to pounce, and _then_ he'd pounce, with his highly invasive presumptions about what gave her pleasure, asking about her tongue or Thad's pinky finger, utilizing a jarring combination of scientific terminology and expletives - anything to get her to react so that he could _accuse her of reacting_.

It never came. She started to wonder if he was waiting for her to mention it, playing a masterful game of cat and mouse in the negative. It would be just like him to attempt to induce paranoia in order to get her to broach a topic that he wanted to needle her about. But she knew _he knew_ that she wouldn't give in to that. So, that couldn't be it.

Her next concern was that he actually hadn't noticed. There would be only two possibilities to explain that. First, he may not have been in the apartment. It had occurred to Watson that her charge slipped out when she wasn't looking over his shoulder. He hardly slept, and the man delighted in the intrigue of imaginary traps that he had created for himself to escape. He had become addicted to the practice after he found the high it got him when he escaped the actual surveillance posted at his secure rehab facility, and then the measures she had tried to implement to keep tabs on his movements in the first few days of her employment. He had realized that there would likely be no challenge as high as those he could create for himself, and had taken to setting them. The only drawback was that if he set the traps himself, he had nobody to gloat over when he broke them. She ended up having to listen to the endless details of the plan and the derailment after the fact. She had begun to suspect that it was actually the storytelling that was what gave the satisfaction, rather than the puzzle making and breaking at this point. But, Holmes had not indulged. So, he had most likely been on premises.

The second reason he wouldn't have noticed was deeply disturbing. He may not have been aware enough to notice. He may have been in a heroin-induced fugue. It was one of the only times his mind slowed enough to stop its endless work. He would have injected in a place difficult to see, and he would have found a way to hide the evidence so that she could not happen across it. But could he have fooled the tests? She tested using saliva, not urine or blood, and she watched as he completed the swabs. There was no way to fake those. How could he have been under less than six hours prior to giving a clean test? There simply was no way to alter the body's metabolic rate for the chemicals that radically. It would have been detectable, as would any of the other substances that might have come close to altering his consciousness. She breathed more easily, but was not fully relieved.

The man would not have respected her privacy.

He would not simply be kind.

He would not be normal enough to be uninterested.

By day four his obsessive attention to detail and his narcissistic tendencies would have driven him to reveal any plan within a plan within a plan he had set up to manipulate her into confronting him about it. She caught herself looking over her shoulder to check if he was watching her covertly. He never seemed to be, but by day five she managed to raise his suspicions. Shit.

"Seventeen."

"Excuse me?"

"Seventeen."

Watson shifted her gaze toward him out of the corner of her eye as they rode in the taxi toward their meeting with Gregson.

"It's the percentage increase in the number of times you have covertly looked at me over the last 36 hours. Your typical rate of covert glancing is approximately three times per two hours. You have glanced approximately seventeen percent more often than that, beginning near 9:00 pm last night. Do you have a particular question you would like to ask me, or did the hair trim I gave myself on Tuesday enhance my profile in a pleasing way? I have already considered and dismissed three other possible causes for the increase. Two you disproved yourself in our conversations, and the other I ruled out by adding an additional shower to my schedule."

She turned her attention fully to him. "You cut your hair? Yourself?"

"Yes. I find it to be an exhilarating way to test my kinesthetic reasoning capacity. Did you know that there are over 140,000 hairs on the human head at any given moment? Only about 120,000 of them are actually alive and rooted. The rest are dead and just...," he gestured emphatically, "sitting there. Your head," he reached across as if to grab hers, but she narrowed her eyes and he veered away, "is a graveyard for strands of protein that your body can't help itself but produce."

"You don't use a mirror." It wasn't a question. She tilted her head to get a clearer look at him.

"Of course not. That would compromise the exercise."

"Of course." She turned back to watch the traffic out of the front window of the cab. She wondered briefly if he had been trimming his hair during her highly enjoyable activities with Thad. Despite herself she felt a blush rising, and she shook her head to clear the thought away.

"What?"

"What, what?"

"What were you shaking your head about? Your cheeks have increased color. You know, if you are attracted to me it would not be surprising. I have prepared myself for this eventuality."

"Eventuality. Eventuality?"

"Eventuality, yes. It only stands to reason that..."

She cut him off. "So, I glance at you more than three times in two hours, I shake my head and my cheeks look rosy and suddenly, what?"

"Well, we live in close prox-"

"So a change in your hair is going to flip my 'jump the addict-client' switch?"

"No. I mean – well, I wasn't the one looking at you and..."

"And what?!"

"And I did shower recently," she rolled her eyes, "and you have shown an _unnatural disinterest_ in my sexual partners. Then there is your refusal to talk with me about the content of any of my liasons. I can assure you that my attention to detail is greatly appreciated by those -"

"Ah! Stop! Stop." She held up her palm between them as if to ward off the taint of his words.

"I can only assume this means you are experiencing a bout of jeal-"

"Oh, no! You were _not_ just about to say 'jealousy' were you!?"

"In point of fact, yes I was. It isn't as though you have been engaging in any satisfying intercourse during the time of your employ, have you?"

And as quickly as her temper had flared, it was chilled into an icy, deadly calm. She was still. "Dirty trick, Holmes. Dirty, dirty trick."

His lips had pulled into the gesture of self-satisfaction that told her the gig was up. "I find it particularly amusing that you choose that turn of phrase, Watson." Joan was struck by a deep longing to punch him. Hard. Several times. In the nose. And to think, she had worried that he had relapsed.

She turned, eyes forward again.

"Oh, come now, Watson. How long have we worked together?"

She remained silent.

He rushed on. "You knew it was coming. I watched you work it through, and try all the possibilities. Really, it was quite fascinating! If you must know, to anyone else – probably in the entire city – not only would your encounter have gone unobserved, but your diligence in not giving yourself away after the fact would have cemented it to a certainty."

She tightened a muscle in her jaw. For someone so brilliant, he was being pretty stupid.

"When it came down to it, though, I was almost sure I'd just have to come out and say something. You were doing an excellent job of deducing my process. Perhaps you just need a bit more training at stealth surveil-"

And with that, Joan Watson popped Sherlock Holmes squarely in the nose with a dainty, solid fist. It bled for a brief, yet satisfying period of time.


End file.
